> I think semantics and state are different things. You can have either without the other.
Semantics is always a vague concept, so let me try to further clarify. What I was referring to is something that describes the internal behavior of the service and is currently not expressed in the WSDL interface. To take Chris' example, if a client sends a message containing two coordinates to a map service with the expectation that the service will refer to a map that the client previously retrieved, this particular server behavior is what I would say to be part of its semantics (i.e. not expressed in the interface).
Ugo